


Thunder Follows Lightning

by QueenofLit



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't say I didn't warn you, Dubious Consent, Eat the Rare, Encephalitus, Gratuitous Metaphor, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, nasty disease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 02:12:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12180894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofLit/pseuds/QueenofLit
Summary: Gideon is speaking words his soul knows. Instead of moving to speak of Alana Bloom, however, he mentions Garret Jacob Hobbs. Will's life shatters to pieces as the waves rear up in response to the ferocity of lightning's strike, but warm hands lead him up and away to safety in the clouds of the storm.He can hear the thunder of an oncoming storm, and it is soothing to know that the lightning will never leave him.





	Thunder Follows Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, okay? Every time I watch Gideon pt. II I think of this - of their strange connection and how interestingly fucked up their relationship would be. Full of broken thought processes and probably some daddy kink. The mind is delicate, after all, especially when set on fire. It's beyond amazing that Will doesn't suffer any side effects from having it go on so long - things like that can permanently alter a mind's way of thinking. There are a hundred permanent side effects that Will skips out on, so this explores one idea of what if he hadn't been so lucky? 
> 
> Tiniest ship is tiny, rowing quietly along and humming unhealthy, creepy tunes.

“I don’t know if I will ever be myself again. I don’t know if I’ve got any self left over.” 

The words resound with him, deeply - some latent chord striking in his chest like thunder. It drowned out the pulsing of the waves, however - silenced the storm with the sheer surprise at its arrival. So similar to the words he’d released into the air not so long ago. _I feel like I am gradually becoming different._

The man releases a sigh - ghost puff of air. “I spent so long thinking I was him, it’s got really hard to remember who I was when I wasn’t him.” He flickers in and out of sight - sometimes Garrett, sometimes a shorter man with hair more akin to Will’s own - but his words sound like things Will’s soul already knows. 

_I fear not knowing who I am._

“Who are you now?” Will has to ask. 

The man shrugs, pulling his lips inward as his eyebrows raise. “I’m not entirely certain. Perhaps I’ll slip on another identity. This Hobbs character, perhaps,” he adds. Turning, for once, to look at Will. 

“The man I thought you were,” Will echoes, looking through those eyes to the chaos inside. Chairs upturned and cushions on the table. There are lamps on the shelves and books on the walls - nothing is in its place, and yet... and yet. 

Dark eyes narrow in gentle thought. “Perhaps I will be that. Or perhaps something new. You’re used to slipping skins, Mr. Graham, tell me - can you ever find your own skin again?”

Will can feel his hands shake - trembling with all the rolling of thunder as he prepares for the strike of lightning. “I could,” he protests weakly into the storm. “I used to know.” 

The storm looks back at him - a reflection in churning waves as the air stills. “I guess that makes us more alike than I would have thought, Mr. Graham.” The still quiet of the storm breaths in the air between them - a moment that by its nature could never remain. “Both of us standing here, not knowing who we are - owing that to the doctors who couldn’t resist putting their hands in our head for the sheer pleasure of feeling brain matter on skin.” 

Lightning strikes, and every hair of his skin rises to stand at it’s sight. “You knew who I thought you were,” Will found himself mumbling truths to the howling wind. “Why would Hannibal - he - _why_?”

Gideon shrugs. The tilt of his mouth is no more than mirth in the muck and mire. Humor that grew because it knew there was no way up from stained ground. “What more can you expect of their kind?” he ponders in uncaring acceptance of fact. “Psychiatrists are given leave to play god with people’s minds - seems to reason the power would eventually go to their heads.” 

Will suddenly finds the cold snow seeping into the joints of his knees. His anchor was gone - had it ever existed? - he no longer knew his way. 

As he knelt there, lost and alone upon a frozen wasteland he could feel in his soul, a hand softly rested upon his brow. Comforting fingers ran through his hair. 

“Let’s take you to a real doctor, Mr. Graham,” the lightning spoke. Its heat soft and comforting. “You still look ill. Perhaps we can fix that.” 

“Can we trust a doctor?” Will wants to know. After this last revelation, nothing can be truth. 

“We’ll give him incentive,” Gideon’s remark is bright as the lightning his soul resembles - inherent with danger no matter how light. “Come along Mr. Graham. We’ll see if we can find new skins along the way.” 

And Will, Will leans close to the lightning that calms the storm in his mind and follows as it leads him up from the frozen waves and away from the sea that he has been drowning in for so long. 

They find a doctor working late at a private clinic. “My son is feeling rather under the weather,” Gideon states. “I need you fix him.” 

“I can make you an appointment during regular hours.” The doctor’s voice is bland. Flat and shapeless - raisin bran. 

“Ah,” Gideon looks amused. Bright sparks of gathering static. “I’ll rephrase. You’ll fix him, or you’ll find that compared to you, my son looks like the pinnacle of health.” 

“You see Mr. Graham,” Gideon states blithely later, holding a toe in his hand as if it is a curiously shaped toy, “It is amazing how a bit of blood can change a man’s opinion.”

“Is that what we’ll do after the MRI?” Will wants to know. He needs to know there will be something for him when he returns from the tube. 

Dark eyebrows raise in invitation. The man wants an explanation.

Will clarifies as he was bid. Following authority seems to be the only thing he knows anymore. “Change their opinions. Warn the doctors what will happen if they play with people.”

Dark eyes ignite with a spark - the lightning has returned, and Will nearly weeps to see it. “Play with others like I played with Chilton. I must say, Mr. Graham,” Gideon’s left corner of his mouth pulls up in a wry smile, pulling the rest of his face along for the ride. It scrunches half of his face in a subtle shroud of joy, “I like the way you think.” 

Will smiles as he falls into the tunnel of darkness. Maybe the lightning won’t abandon him to drown. 

The doctor heals him once he learns the punishment for denying them - blood and promises and laughter - but Will’s mind is never clear again. Will isn’t certain if he cares, because even if he is no longer clear, at least the water is gone. He no longer drowns. Because he is never still long enough. 

“Today,” Gideon proclaims, turning the key and commanding the engine rumble to life, “I feel like being father and son. An old skin, I know, but it’s a rather well-fitting one. Don’t you think, Mr. Graham?” 

Will is curled up in his seat, but he rolls his head around to look at Gideon. “Of course it fits,” he mumbles. Words curl in his throat now - it takes effort to smooth them out so that they don’t rumble in the air once released. Gideon doesn’t mind so much, though. The rumbles amuse the curtains that now hang on the floor and dance in the resulting breeze. “Lighting always precedes thunder.” 

Gideon chuckles at that. There are echoes of rumbles in his voice as well, and Will wonders if that is what he is. An echo. It is better than being a mirror - at least an echo is never without the event that birthed it. Mirrors simply wait for the next thing they are bid reflect. Existing only in solitude. Together only when someone else. “So it does, son. So it does.” 

Will feels his face stretch into a smile. It is no longer such a strange feeling. “I want to call you Dad. Is that my want, or yours?” 

“Does it matter?” Gideon sounds thoughtful. “I wonder which of us slips the other on. Me, with no self of my own borrowing others like a worn shirt and you, absorbing people to reflect them back. Can an illusion be real?”

“Maybe the illusion is separation,” Will mumbles. The rumbling in his chest soothes him, as does the hand resting lightly on his thigh. “Lightning makes thunder and the thunder is lightning vocalized as sound.” Spoken of and perceived to be separate but two facets of one thing in truth. 

There was a nagging in the back of his brain that said that was wrong. But it couldn’t be - this was all that Will had held after the fire in his brain. It didn’t matter if it was wrong or not - there was no longer any such thing as truth. 

Will only had certainties. He was certain that doctors were bad. He was certain Gideon could find the best ways to better them. He was certain that Gideon’s hands would never leave him to drown. 

The hand on his thigh moved higher up, and Will hummed. Content in the direction of the lightning, he fell into sleep. 

They keep moving, keep switching plates and cars, but while Will holds inside knowledge Gideon is not actually the Chesapeake Ripper. He can slip him on, occasionally, but they are sloppy and without the secrecy needed to make them so meticulous. 

The FBI already knows these crimes are theirs, after all. What does it matter if they leave a hair lying about? Besides, Gideon does so love leaving his little notes. 

In the second month Gideon had grabbed him round the waist and pulled him close. It was no longer as strange as it had been, to Will - sharing bodily contact with another person. It is natural, this closeness to the lightning. 

A flash - Will finds himself looking out the corner of his eye at the strange thing. Fortunately there is no witness to kill, merely one of those polaroid cameras Gideon has become so fond of. 

“Smile for the FBI, Mr. Graham.” Gideon’s voice is cheery, bouncing with mirth as his hand rests proprietarily upon Will’s hip. 

Will blinks once, before he catches Gideon’s dark gaze in his own. At the familiar sight of upturned chairs and confused lamps, he finds a smile sliding onto his face. It is almost an intrinsic response now to the sight of a man just like him. 

The camera flashes once more at the sight of two blood-soaked men staring into the chaos of their leftover bits of selves and smiling at the similarities they hold in having nothing left. 

When Jack sees the photo left behind, weeks later, the stone in his gut can only sink further. The Will Graham being held possessively to Gideon has none of Will’s spirit - a ghost looks at the camera from the corner of his dead eyes, face blank and hands dripping with red. Gideon is the one who has personality - taunting them with the smirk on his face and the hand resting on Will’s hip, far enough down to make the implication frightfully clear. 

It is the small bag of polaroids that ultimately does it, funny enough. Will cannot help but watch as the cops at a regular check flips through father son photos to find one with a dead body. 

Gideon has his fun tying the man into knots as Will beats the other into pulp, but the damage has been done. The authorities now have an accurate idea of where they are. It isn’t long until men in blue and phantoms in black are all around them. 

Hands try to take him from Gideon, and Will feels the forced separation in his very bones. He screams with all the force of thunder - rumbles across the deserted bridge and forces the weak to step back. Will flexes fingers into claws and tears free of all who attempt to take him away, skin thick beneath his nails when he is finally able to bury his head safe and sound in the chest of his beginning. 

Gideon’s shrug is casual in its mockery, yet he holds to Will with the strength of mountains and the width of his stance speaks of his readiness to strike with all the fire he holds in his bones. “Mr. Graham and I have become somewhat conjoined.” Gideon speaks with the sharp bright tone Will loves most. “I don’t think either of us care to see if we can untangle.” 

Will can feel the water rising at his back, attempting to sneak closer. He vibrates a warning from his very bones - rumbling and deep and menacing as the sudden southern summer storms. 

Then came the voice of the woman they’d spared. “I think forcing them apart might do more harm than good, Jack.” 

Will has to look, at that. Alana is just as lovely as he remembers, despite the weight of her shoulders and the bags under her eyes. 

“Hello Dr. Bloom,” Gideon greets, and his voice has become more truthful in the greeting. “I have to say I’m glad I didn’t go through with killing you.” 

Alana’s eyes widen in alarm. Will wants the worry to go away, so he speaks. “I found Gideon outside you house. He took care of me instead of you.” 

“Seems our dear Dr. Lecter wanted to see how encephalitis affected Mr. Graham’s thought process,” Gideon adds. 

“Encephalitis?” Alana repeats, and she isn’t any calmer. 

Will has to try and reassure her once more. He takes his time to smooth the rumble of his chest so that his words are clear, even if they arrive slowly. “Fire’s gone. Don’t worry about me, Alana - thunder can’t drown.” 

Alana can’t help but to look at Jack, a terrified glance she shares with him again the next day. Gideon sits on the bench of the holding room as if nothing is amiss. Will is sleeping soundly, calm and settled in a way she and Jack have never seen before. Curled up on the bench, head resting in Gideon’s lap, Will is finally at peace with a killer’s hand running through his hair. Mocking. 

“Will he ever be himself again?” Jack releases the question everyone is thinking into the air. 

“We can fix some of the damage but, Jack...” Alana can’t help but to place her hand on Jack’s arm - comfort as much as a shoulder to lean on. “Will’s brain was boiling itself alive. There’s no end to what such a disease did to his thought process - he may not be capable of being the same person anymore.” 

Jack’s nod was slow - weighted down with another talent lost from under his guard. 

“Why didn’t Hannibal drive Will to the hospital,” Alana can’t help but to wonder. She couldn’t believe Gideon’s account of the night, not truly, but the pieces seemed damning coupled with the call Jack had received. 

A hum prompts her to look again to Jack. There is darkness in his eyes as he parries her doubt back to her. “Why indeed.” 

The cops go against Jack’s advice and send a rookie to move Gideon and Will, lulled into complacency by how agreeable the two have been as long as there are no attempts to separate them. Gideon laughs about it as they drive away in a stolen car, and it’s as bright as the taste of the blood under Will’s tongue. 

The car gets them north, where a minivan sees them safely into the Canadian wilderness. Will has a cabin again, and dogs, and his lightning. Gideon seems content to lay low, and turns the blood of his strikes into the heat of touch. Will is content with the change of pace, stretching out nightly in quiet rumbles of distant storms. 

A year later, as they watch Hannibal Lecter sentenced for the crimes of the Chesapeake Ripper, Gideon smiles. “You know what? I think I feel like a road trip. What do you think, son?” 

Will’s smile is slow and wide, hopeful with the promise of holding blood once more. 

The first of the spring’s storms rumbles in the distance with foreboding promise.


End file.
